winter carnival

engraving reads [ "To 1st Lt. F. Scott Fitzgerald
65th Infantry
Camp Sheridan

Forget-me-not
Zelda
9-13-18
Montgomery, Ala" ]

Dartmouth's winter carnival was last weekend. I still remember the movie 'Winter Carnival' (1939) from when I saw it once at around age 12. I had no idea it was connected to F. Scott Fitzgerald untill years later. I still have this fuzzy romantic notion of the movie. Big fur (racoon?) coats and sipping whiskey. Party goers sking down the hill holding candles. I haven't seen it since that first time and I'm sure my memory of it is all fuzzy.

From an NYT travel piece-

"It was Fitzgerald's latest attempt at a professional comeback. It had been five hard years since the publication of Tender Is the Night, and he had spent them battling alcoholism, attempting -- and largely failing -- to jump start a screenwriting career, and occasionally writing self-lacerating confessionals for Esquire magazine.

By the time the pair disembarked from the Winter Carnival Special train from New York, Fitzgerald had already been drunk for about 24 hours, according to Mr. Schulberg. Unaware of the author's alcoholism, Mr. Schulberg's father had presented the travelers with two bottles of Mumm Champagne for their flight from Burbank. In New York, Fitzgerald had snuck out to a bar. And somehow, Mr. Schulberg recalled during a phone interview last month, Fitzgerald was able to procure liquor on the train as well. During the whole visit, Fitzgerald maintained a constant state of unproductive inebriation, much to the dismay of Wanger, who attended the festivities as well.

Walter Wanger had arranged for the head of the English department and some of the top people there to meet with us and hear our projection of story lines for the film, Mr. Schulberg said. Both of us looked disreputable. I don't think, honestly, we'd changed our clothes since we'd left the airplane. And on top of all the other drinking, a favorite sociology professor of mine was a huge fan of Fitzgerald's, and so to celebrate, at a moment when I was trying to taper Scott off, he came to the room with a bottle of whiskey and it all started all over again."